Dingonek
.]] : Other names: Jungle walrus, ol-umaina, ndamathia : Country reported: The dingonek was a cryptid reported from , known to the Masai, Kikuyu, and Lumbaya, and made famous by a 1907 sighting by English adventurer John Alfred Jordan.Eberhart, George (2002) Mysterious Creatures: A Guide to Cryptozoology Bernard Heuvelmans classified it with the water lions seen elsewhere in Africa.Heuvelmans, Bernard (1978) Les derniers dragons d'Afrique Description The dingonek was described by Jordan as being around 15 feet long, covered in scales like a pangolin, but also spotted like a leopard. Its head is like that of either an otter or a lioness, with two straight, white tusks in the upper jaw, and short ears. Its neck and legs are short and it has a broad, hippopotamus-like back, and a long, broad, finned tail. Its feet are large and clawed. Although no sightings have been recorded since 1907, Jordan later wrote that, among local tribes, it was considered taboo to kill a dingonek, which Karl Shuker notes is a good omen for its continued existence.Shuker, Karl (1995) In Search of Prehistoric Survivors Sightings 1907 John Alfred Jordan was an English big game hunter and notorious ivory poacher operating in southern British East Africa (now ), along the border with German East Africa (now ). This region was rarely visited by whites: those who lived there were mainly poachers and smugglers of ivory, pelts, and horns. Jordan later claimed that in 1907, whilst on a march towards the Migori River, he was led by his carriers and guards to a dingonek in the river. He fired at it, apparently hitting it behind the ear, but it leaped at him and he fled. When he returned, it was gone, though it left behind tracks. The first person to hear and recount this story was the American hunter Edgar Beecher Bronson, who came upon Jordan's camp at Engabai on 31 January 1909. After talking about the okapi, Jordan told his story to Bronson:Bronson, Edgar Beecher (1910) Closed Territory :"... we were on the march approaching the Maggori, and I had stayed back with the porters and sheep and had sent the Lumbwa ahead to look for a drift we could cross—river was up and booming and chances poor. Presently I heard the bush smashing and up raced my Lumbwa, wide-eyed and gray as their black skins could get, with the yarn that they had seen a frightful strange beast on the river bank, which at sight of them had plunged into the water—as they described it, some sort of cross between a sea serpent, a leopard, and a whale. Thinking they had gone crazy or were pulling my leg, I told them I'd believe them if they could show me, but not before. After a long shauri palaver among themselves, back they finally ventured, returning in half an hour to say that IT lay full length exposed on the water in midstream. :"Down to the Maggori I hurried, and there their 'bounder' lay, right-oh! :"Holy saints, but he was a sight—fourteen or fifteen feet long, head big as that of a lioness but shaped and marked like a leopard, two long white fangs sticking down straight out of his upper jaw, back broad as a hippo, scaled like an armadillo, but colored and marked like a leopard, and a broad fin tail, with slow, lazy swishes of which he was easily holding himself level in the swift current, headed up stream. :"Gad! but he was a hideous old haunter of a nightmare, was that beast-fish, that made you want an aeroplane to feel safe of him; for while he lay up stream of me, I had been brought down to the river bank precisely where he had taken water, and there all about me in the soft mud and loam were the imprints of feet wide of diameter as a hippo's but clawed like a reptile's, feet you knew could carry him ashore and claws you could be bally well sure no man could ever get loose from once they had nipped him. :"Blast that blighter's fangs, but they looked long enough to go clean through a man. :"He had not seen or heard me, and how long I stood and watched him I don't know. Anyway, when I began to fear he would shift or turn and see me, I gave him a .303 hard-nose behind his leopard ear—and then hell split for fair! :"Straight up out of the water he sprang, straight as if standing on his blooming tail—must have jumped off it, I fancy. :"Me? Well, I never quit sprinting until I was atop of the bank and deep in the bush—fancier burst of speed than any wounded bull elephant ever got out of me, my word for that! :"That was one time when my presence of mind didn't succeed in getting away with me from the starting post, and when, finally, it overtook me, and I bunched nerve enough to stop and listen, the bush ahead of me was still smashing with flying Lumbwa, but all was silent astern. :"His legs? What were they like? Blest if I know! The same second that he stood up on his tail, I got too busy with my own legs to study his. :"Gory wonder, was that fellow; a .303, where placed, should have killed anything, for he was less than ten yards from me when I shot, but though we watched waters and shores over a range of several miles for two days, no sight did we get of him or his tracks." Bronson was initially sceptical, so Jordan asked him to interview his hunting party about the incident, and, through an interpreter, they all gave more-or-less identical description. When Bronson published Jordan's story, it was widely regarded as a traveller's tale, but C. W. Hobley met a second eyewitness who claimed to have had an encounter with a very similar animal, at around the same time, on the Mara River near the border with German East Africa. According to Hobley:Hobley, C. W. "On Some Unidentified Beasts", Journal of the East Africa and Uganda Natural History Society 6 (1913) :"He was at the time where the Mara River crosses the frontier, and the river was in high flood. The beast came floating down the river on a big log, and he estimated its length at about sixteen feet, but could not certain of its length as its tail was in the water. He describes it as spotted like a leopard, covered with scales, and having a head like an otter; he did not see the long fangs described by Mr. Jordan. He fired at it and hit it; it slid off the log into the water and was not seen again." Theories :Main article: Water lion#Theories Jordan and others at the time regarded the animal as reptilian, perhaps a marine reptile or a dinosaur, but Bernard Heuvelmans later speculated that it was a surviving sabre-toothed cat, with the scales being explained as clumps of wet, shiny, matted fur. Philippe Coudray also suggests that it may have been a species of enormous pangolin, which are usually toothless.Coudray, Philippe (2016) Guide des Animaux Cachés Similar cryptids Do you think the exists? If so, what do you think the is? Myth, folklore, hoax, or otherwise made-up Mistaken identity Living sabre-toothed cat Living dinosaur *The chipekwe *The lukwata, which Jordan compared to the dingonek. *Water lions Further cryptozoological reading *Heuvelmans, Bernard (1978) Les Derniers Dragons d'Afrique *Heuvelmans, Bernard & Rivera, Jean-Luc & Barloy, Jean-Jacques (2007) Les Félins Encore Inconnus d’Afrique Notes and references Category:Cryptids Category:Africa Category:Kenya Category:Water lions Category:River monsters Category:Theory: Living fossil - Sabre toothed cat Category:Historical - Modern Category:No recent sightings